


i'm falling, so I'm taking my time on my ride

by babykanima



Series: ride [1]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-19
Updated: 2015-05-19
Packaged: 2018-03-31 07:48:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3969844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babykanima/pseuds/babykanima
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You’re the weird one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i'm falling, so I'm taking my time on my ride

**Author's Note:**

> okay so literally i just went and saw this movie, came home and wrote this in like 40mins. that's why it's choppy and weird but let's call it artistic liberty, mmkay?
> 
> come and [ visit me ](http://lynchcycle.tumblr.com/)

You’re the weird one.

Cheedo was the baby, the newest and shiniest of the wives at just fourteen. She’d come to you all at twelve (twelve and small and fragile; Cheedo the Fragile you had named her and it had stuck), carried in by a smiling Joe one day like a present and she’d only just started to bleed when you ran so she didn’t really have any idea what life was like underneath your husband.

That’s probably why she wanted to go back in the first place. She’d only fucked him twice and it was horrible, terrible and filthy and _wrongwrongwrong_ every single time, no mistaking that, but it was only twice. That’s nothing compared to you.

Capable was kind. She was the one born to be a mother, you think. She’d brushed your hair back when you first started throwing up in the morning, had pressed her forehead to yours in fear, in sympathy, in _love_ when she lost her first baby and you had glared at her from your spot by the toilet. It hadn’t been fair, you remember thinking. She wants the baby, why can’t she have yours?

Toast was complicated. She came after you too (it went like this; Spendid, Capable, you, Toast, Cheedo), in a fiery screaming rage and she’d made herself sick denying herself water and food for weeks while Joe was trying to court her until suddenly one day she just. . . ate. Like it was nothing.

She was strong and tried so hard to be the brave one but mostly, mostly she was envious. You watched her sometimes, as Joe pulled Splendid away from you all again, as her eyes burned with anger at being pushed aside in favour of the eldest. How could you envy something you hated? You would think. Why is she so eager to be the favourite?

And Splendid was, well. She was the _most_ splendid, wasn’t she?

She was beauty and kindness and strength. She was an angel. She was _everything_.

You’re eighteen and only just pregnant with your second baby (the first one didn’t last a day and you’re grateful for it, truly, honestly) when Splendid says one day, completely out of nowhere;

“We are not things.”

And it’s like this great weight settles across you, like a blanket of awareness. You’d been sixteen when you arrived at the Citadel, scavenged by your own family in the middle of the night and sold for a half-full bag of gasoline and you’d always wanted to leave, always wanted to escape your husband but it’s like. . .

You were his.

Bought and paid for.

And then Splendid told you that you weren’t.

* * *

Sometimes you see things backwards.

It’s weird, like your point of view is running on a different level than the others’ and that’s okay, you know? You’ve always been this way and maybe it’s like your faults are on all the inside, just trying to come out at the wrong time or in the wrong way. Maybe you’re not the perfect Wife like the others, maybe you’re just better at hiding your deformities than everybody else.

You catch Splendid with a knife the first month you’re there and it’s only because you’d woken up in the middle of the night because you needed to pee.

You don’t understand at first, what it is exactly she’s doing, because she’s facing one of the mirrors that are hanging everywhere and her arm is covering the blood but then you figure it out. She’s carving deep lines into her face with a determined look and you think to yourself _she’s never looked prettier._

“He likes my legs.” She tells you without turning around. “He runs his hands over them all the time and I just want to cut them off.” She looks irritated, “But then how would I run?”

“Does it help?” You ask curiously.

“No.”

“Then why do you do it?”

She stops, dropping the knife with a clatter and a trickle of blood slices through her eyebrow. “Because he can’t stop me.”

He tries, the next day and the day after that and the day after that. Always screaming at her for _damaging his property_ but nobody can ever figure out where she keeps the knives and so he can’t stop her, can’t control her.

It’s a bleeding miracle, you think giddily as you watch him crush the skull of one of his men instead of Splendid. She’s crazy.

* * *

You don’t cry anymore.

Cheedo cries sometimes, and even Capable after a session with your husband or when she loses a baby again (seven in total and you try not to be mean, you do). But you and Splendid and Toast, you’re the ones who get angry.

Toast gets angry often, at Joe, at Capable, at Splendid. You think she’s just too small for all those feelings she’s got inside her and they come bursting out of her in rages.

You don’t know who you’re angry at; Joe or your family or the people who let the world end around them but you do know it’s not _fair_. It’s not fair you’re here in this bunker with its big metal door and no windows and a man you hate between your legs every week.

So you don’t cry.

You _hate_.

You hate when you’re bathed.

You hate when you’re shaved.

(You hate when you’re fucked the most.

When you’re getting fucked you stare at the roof and imagine the stories. There are satellites up there, you know. Just kind of spinning around the world trying to tell stories to people who aren’t insane and one day you like to think maybe they’ll find somebody.

You hope they’ll find somebody.)

Joe likes your hair the best.

Toast’s eyes.

Splendid’s legs.

Capable’s ass.

Cheedo’s frailty.

But it’s _your_ hair he wraps in his fists as he takes you from behind, _your_ hair he yanks or pets or kisses depending on his mood.

You hate your hair.

* * *

You escape.

Splendid dies.

The old woman is the closest thing you’ve ever felt to somebody like you, somebody weird and wrong who sees things differently and when she dies as well. . . you wish you could trade places with her, just for a second.

But you want to see the trees.

* * *

Everything’s different now that Furiosa is running things. There’s plenty of water and everybody seems so happy and your garden is growing, growing, growing high into the sky and you don’t have to fuck anybody ever again, she tells you.

“Your legs never have to open unwillingly again.” She tells you.

“I fucking promise.” She tells you.

You wonder what happened to Max sometimes, wonder if he’s someplace with plenty of water and green and Capable always looks sad when you wonder and you think maybe it’s not because of Max at all (or even Splendid who you all still mourn, who you cry about at night because you’ve always had Spendid next to you in the Citadel but now you don't and it's horrible). You think maybe she liked that War Boy more than she let on.

Her hands run across her stomach often, with a sort of loneliness you wish you could trade her for. One baby for an empty womb.

One Warlord Junior for a story.

They tell your story now, the down-below people. You grabbed their hands and lifted them high the day you came back but Toast tells you that you can’t walk through them ever again. You’re still too pure, too breakable, and they’re still insane even with water available all the time. You don’t want to listen but Furiosa agrees (which makes Toast smug) and Cheedo holds your hand tightly, fearfully and you think _oh_.

You don’t get fucked anymore but it’s still a prison.

* * *

Months pass and the stories grow.

In them, you’re the weird one.

But your baby is the most beautiful little girl you’ve ever seen.

 


End file.
